The Origin of Sorrow (19 page)

They could leave their goods behind, the stalls were protected at night. This was necessary for merchants who came from other cities, and for the reputation of the Fair itself. It was held under the personal auspices of the Empress. Woe be to those who embarrassed her.

None of the merchants was in a hurry to face his wife, his children, to explain why he had returned early, to describe what he had seen. The two with broken arms went to the hospital, where Doctor Berkov set a splint on one and the new Doctor Kirsch took care of the other. Most drifted from habit to the center of the lane, to the synagogue, where they stood outside and talked among themselves. Guttle urged her father to go to the hospital, to have Doctor Berkov look at his neck, where he’d been struck. That could wait, he said; he was the one who’d identified the blacksmith; he wanted to hear what people were saying. Seeing the crowd outside the schul, others who had not been at the Fair left their homes to see what was happening.

Ephraim Hess vaulted onto the synagogue steps and waved his arms for quiet. People wondered who this rag dealer thought he was, to be taking charge like that. When the gossip had cooled to a murmur, Ephraim began to orate. They all knew what had happened today, he said. An innocent Jew had been hanged at the Fair. They as Jews could not ignore this. Business could not go on as usual. They must stick together. He urged them all to withdraw from the Fair; to get their merchandise back in the morning, and not return. The government and the Polizei must be shown that they could not do such things to Jews.

Shouts of agreement came from some in the gathering. “No more Fair!” they began to yell. “No more Fair!”

“Then do we all agree?” Ephraim asked the crowd.

Amid a mixed response, Wolf Schnapper slowly mounted the steps, rubbing his neck. He stood beside the rag dealer and asked for silence.

“I think most of you know who I am,” he said. “Wolf Schnapper, currently Chairman of the Judengasse Council. Before we do anything precipitous, I think we should hear from other speakers.” He looked about. “I see there in the rear another member of the council, Meyer Rothschild. Come up here, Meyer Amschel, and give us your thoughts.”

On the edge of the throng, Meyer turned to Guttle. “Your father has a wicked streak.”

He could hardly refuse to respond. They were waiting for him. He circled the crowd and climbed the steps and looked from face to face while focusing his thoughts.

“Except for reading from the Torah in schul,” he began, “I have never spoken to a gathering such as this. I am a private person.”

There was total stillness as they listened.

“I applaud the anger of my friend Ephraim Hess —” he turned to the rag dealer — “if I may call you my friend.” Hess smiled, nodded. “I, too, am furious at what we witnessed today. I think we all share a natural urge to respond to this unnatural killing — perhaps even to hurt someone. I know I do.”

“Revenge!” someone in the crowd yelled.

“But whom do we want to hurt?” Meyer continued. “Surely not ourselves. It has been my experience at the Fair that the most business is done the last few days. People have walked about with money in their pockets, looking at all the things they can buy. Now, in the next three days, they will do the spending. And on Friday they will want to change what money they have left back to their own currency. The money changers — I am one of them — will make profits.”

“No, no, no!” someone cried out. “A man is dead!”

“This is not about business!” another yelled.

“There is a principle here,” a third shouted.

Meyer held up his hand for silence. “Hear me out,” he pleaded. “I haven’t yet gotten to my point.”

“Well, get to it, or close your mouth,” a stout heckler yelled.

“The question,” he intoned as they quieted, “is not whether to respond, but how to respond. My point about business was not that we would lose money — but that the Gentiles will know this. They will see our stalls empty, and they will laugh. Do you know why they will laugh? Because they will think we are afraid! They will think that the sight of a man dangling from a rope has frightened us away. They will think that a few blows from the clubs of their Constables have sent us packing up our goods and going home. Is that what we want them to think?”

There were murmurs in the crowd. He went on.

“For more than three hundred years we have been locked in this Judengasse. Have we survived because we are afraid? Of course not! We have survived because we are strong. In the year 1614, when the Fettmilch gang rampaged through the lane, looting shops and beating our people, did our forebears turn and run? They did not. They picked up cudgels and brooms and lit into the intruders and beat them back. Many a Gentile thug went home that day with a bleeding head or a broken bone. No thugs have attacked the lane since.”

“That’s right,” someone yelled.

“That’s because they hanged the ringleaders,” someone else shouted.

“The man knows his history,” Meyer said. “The emperor hanged Fettmilch and the other mob leaders. But would he have done that if our brave ancestors had cringed in fear, instead of fighting those thugs, and demanding justice afterward? I think not.

“Now we are on trial again, and once again we need to demonstrate our strength. We need to return to the Fair tomorrow as if nothing has happened. We must carry on business as usual, sick as we feel inside. That is the way to show them they cannot intimidate us.”

“Rothschild makes sense,” Jacob Marcus said.

Murmurs of agreement seemed to spread.

Meyer continued. “I hope, as you do, that these walls that surround us will come down in our lifetime. Not in our children’s lifetime, or our children’s children’s, but in ours!” Cheers erupted among some of the spectators. He held up his hand. “But to see that happen, we cannot appear to be defeated. We cannot slink away like a beaten cur. We cannot abandon the field of battle. And if the field of battle happens to involve profits, as it does at the Fair, all the more reason not to run away. What kind of triumph is that?”

“He’s right,” came a cry from the crowd.

“Hot as it is,” someone said, “winter will come. We’ll need to feed our children when business slows.”

Murmurs of agreement were everywhere now.

“We have survived worse,” Meyer shouted, his voice growing hoarse. “There is no shame in surviving. There is no shame in being patient. But fleeing — that we must never do.”

A roar of approval greeted these final words. Meyer felt euphoric as he turned away from them. Wolf Schnapper put a hand on his shoulder and said into his ear above the noise, “You will be very rich one day.”

Meyer stepped back as if he’d been slapped. He glared for a moment, then turned away without responding and hurried down the steps. Behind him the rag dealer was asking for quiet.

“Rothschild is right!” someone else yelled.

Ephraim Hess help up his hands. “I agree with you. Herr Rothschild is right! I tend to be hot-headed sometimes. I want direct action. But going back to the Fair and facing them — that’s direct action as well. Perhaps more courageous than what I suggested. I withdraw what I said before. Let’s go back and take their money. Let’s show we are not afraid.”

The assent was unanimous. The men in the crowd felt better, their anger and frustration vented. They were ready to go home. They moved off in knots, to the south and to the north, eager to return to the Fair in the morning. Guttle hurried to Meyer. “You were wonderful,” she said. “What did my father whisper to you?”

“Your father is a fool sometimes.”

He saw the questioning hurt on her face. He took her hand. Together they walked toward the Owl and the Hinterpfann. Guttle did not understand.

They’d gone only a few steps when the Chief Rabbi called to Meyer from the doorway to his study. They crossed the sewage ditch to see what he wanted. Their hands were perspiring. They let them drop.

“I enjoyed how you threw cold water on that young hothead,” the Rabbi said.

“Is that what I did, Rabbi? Ephraim Hess is a good man.”

“Perhaps. But that’s not why I called you over. I know this is not an appropriate time, the hanging must have been terrible to see; we’ll say yizkor for the man in schul. Nonetheless, life must go on. Before this happened, my Gilda bought half a cow from the butcher. She’s preparing a welcoming supper this evening for the new Doctor. Berkov will be there, and Rabbi Simcha. I thought perhaps you’d like to join us. Hear the latest folderol from the universities.”

“I’d be honored, Rabbi.”

Without thinking, Meyer looked at Guttle. Guttle blushed and peered at the ground. The Rabbi glanced from one to the other. “You may come, too, young lady. Right after evening service.”

Rabbi Eleazar returned to his study. They resumed strolling in the dying heat of the lane.

“I feel awkward,” Guttle said. “Does he really want me to come?”

“He likes you. He’s the Chief Rabbi, he doesn’t have to do things just to be polite.”

They heard a thumping on the cobbles and saw Isidor Kracauer come running, cheeks puffing, blond hair akimbo. Guttle recalled her promise; she had not yet brought him a flower.

“Did you hear what they did to the blacksmith?” Izzy asked, breathless.

“We saw what they did to him,” Meyer said.

“No. No. After the hanging.”

“Hanging him wasn’t enough?”

“The bastards cut off his head. It’s stuck on a pike at the Fahrtor gate.”

16

Ephraim Hess was tearing chunks off the bread, dipping them into his soup, forcing himself to eat, though he had no appetite. He did not know when he would get to eat again. He might never eat again; if they got caught, the penalty most likely would be death. Eva sat across from him, unable to swallow a morsel. The baby was asleep on the bed, which took up most of the kitchen of their two-room apartment; the front room was the rag shop.

The blacksmith’s head would be facing the river, Ephraim assumed, facing the bridge across which travelers came. Beyond that he did not know what to expect. Would it still be dripping blood? Probably not. Would it be smiling at having escaped this difficult life? Would it be grimacing in the final pain of the hanging? Would it look still alive and ready to rejoin its body? Would the eyes be rolled back in the ghastly sightlessness of death? He did not know. All he knew was that the head of this innocent Jew murdered by the Gentiles could not be allowed to remain where it was, the eyes and lips pecked at by gulls till a disfigured face was thrown to the fish. It had to be rescued, be given a proper burial — with the rest of the body if that could be found, without it if necessary.

The way to retrieve it had come to him in a jolting image, as if he’d been physically struck, the entire plan visible at once. Quickly he had acquired the cooperation he needed. The cabinet maker would nail together a coffin this evening and leave it outside his shop. The slaughterer, with some misgivings, would leave the back door to the slaughterhouse unlocked. The Liebmann brothers, more muscular than he was, always ready for action, had agreed eagerly when he explained their roles. Everything was ready.

Eva had told him she feared he would not come back, that little Solomon would grow up fatherless. Ephraim replied that he could never be a proper father if he didn’t listen to his heart.

“What about listening to your head?”

“Think about the blacksmith’s head.”

He’d taken her in his arms and their two thin bodies had pressed together and he’d reminded her that when they first became lovers they’d agreed to fight whatever battles needed to be fought to make the world better.

“We were so young then,” she’d said.

“It was only two years ago.”

“I know. We were so young then.”

They weren’t married in the records of the Judengasse. They couldn’t be; Ephraim was still three years shy of twenty-five. Eva was nineteen. He called her his wife, and the lane accepted the fiction, especially after she became pregnant. The Rabbis weren’t happy, but they were not about to make trouble for young lovers because of Frankfurt’s laws. Frankfurt could enforce its laws itself if it found out.

Ephraim stepped into the lane and looked up at the sliver of sky visible above the tenements. It was weary with evening. By now the Liebmann brothers would be hidden in the slaughterhouse, having told the young guard Fritz they were going to buy a chicken. Before they returned the guard at the gate would have changed; the night guard wouldn’t miss them. In the slaughterhouse they’d remove one of the two layers of clothing he’d told them to wear. He was confident they’d time it right, the deaf mute was precise with his pocket watch. When Otto Kracauer locked up his chickens and cows for the night, which he should be doing now — leaving the rear door unlocked — the brothers would remain inside.

In the rag shop, Ephraim took two dresses off their hooks. He folded them, stepped away and looked at them. He decided to add a third. He returned to the kitchen and sat beside Eva on the bed and held her hand. He asked if she were sure she wanted to come with him. She repeated that she was, that he would be safer with her and the baby along; a family man would attract less attention. But he could feel her bones trembling.

“Adonai will protect us,” he said.

“Like He protected the blacksmith from Mainz?”

They sat in silence, hearing only their own thumping hearts. Ephraim lit a small lamp in the quick-falling dark. Solomon woke and began to cry. Eva gave him a breast.

The baby was almost sated when they heard a boom that sounded like thunder over the city. “The first fireworks,” Ephraim said. “That’s our signal.”

Eva wrapped the child in a blanket. Ephraim took the bundle of dresses from the shop. He closed the door and together they walked toward the north gate. Ephraim showed their two Fair passes to the night guard, and held up the folded dresses. “Business was so good today, we have to replace our stock.”

The sky was breaking up with exploding lights. Crackling leaped over the walls. The guard handed their passes back and waved them through. They walked from the lane, passing the darkened slaughterhouse on the left, and turned right at the first crossing. Eva touched his arm. “What if he’d asked why we couldn’t wait till morning?”

“We have passes with the official seal. He’s not supposed to stop us.”

They moved along in the dark street, turned right a second time. Ahead of them was the forbidding outer face of the long ghetto wall. Beside it ran a cobbled walk. Across the street was a city park, appearing deserted in the darkness.

“Find a place that’s comfortable,” Ephraim said. “But don’t fall asleep. You have to be watching for me when I come back.” He handed her two of the three dresses in his bundle, keeping a dark blue one. He stripped off the outer of his two layers of clothing and gave her those.

“Do you really think I could fall asleep?”

“I hope not.” He kissed her on the mouth, a long kiss, as if it might be their last. He pulled himself away and scurried into the deeper dark at the base of the wall.

He wondered why he needed to be a hero, to risk everything for a dead man. But what was his life for? To sell secondhand clothes?

If the timing was right, the mute would at this moment be moving in the dark outside the other wall. Hersch, keeping in the shadows, would be circling three blocks and joining him here.

Ephraim thought: it would be easy to escape from the Judengasse. But escape to where? You would have to leave your friends, go to another city. Perhaps to another Jewish ghetto. That’s why, year after year, there was so little ferment in the lane. Rumor had it that the Judengasse Council had petitioned the city months ago to unlock the gates on Sundays, and allow Jews to enter the city parks. Rumor had it that the city had not even bothered to answer.

He heard the sound of faint footsteps on the cobbles. Before he realized it, Hersch was beside him; for a sturdy fellow he could be light of foot. They nodded to one another curtly; they were not great friends. Ephraim had selected the brothers because they fit his needs. Hersch was both strong and angry; Hiram would not be able to answer the Fahrtor guard’s questions.

“Your brother is on his way?”

Hersch’s nod was barely discernible.

“Follow me,” Ephraim whispered.

They slipped quietly along the base of the wall. A pale quarter moon was visible intermittently between armadas of scudding clouds. Above and behind them, exploding fireworks battled for their attention, but they kept moving.

Ephraim paused, stuck out his arm to stop Hersch. “There’s people in the park,” he whispered. “Watching the sky.”

“What should we do?”

“Keep going — and hope the fireworks last.”

They shrunk into themselves and crept if possible more quietly than before, till they passed the end of the park and the end of the wall and could smell the river, heavy with the humid scent of fog and fish. They walked downhill beside the sloping sluice that carried the wastes from the lane. As they neared the river they could just make out the Fahrtor gate in front of shreds of fog that drifted above the water. They peered into the low darkness. Clouds slid like ice from in front of the sliver of moon. They could see the lone night guard on the stone platform this side of the gate, the outline of sailing vessels anchored behind him. The head would be just the other side of the stone arch, below the Judensau. The only way to get to it would be by wading through the water.

They crept near the river’s edge. The lapping of the current became a booming in their ears. Sitting on wet dirt behind a cluster of leafy bush, they removed their shoes. Ephraim placed the rolled blue dress on the sand. By the hint of moon they could see rats drinking.

The guard on the Fahrtor platform was perhaps forty metres from them. The rag dealer thought: now everything rests on a deaf mute. Impatient, he whispered, “What’s he waiting for?”

“He’s timing it. He wants to make sure he doesn’t start before we’re here.”

The croaking of a strange bird sounded along the narrow beach.

“What was that?”

“That’s him.”

“He’s supposed to bang on a boat. What’s he doing?”

“Improvising. Don’t worry.”

A moment later they heard the banging start, a stick hitting the wooden hull of a small boat. Interspersed was the croaking sound, if not a large bird than a strangling dog.

“It’s the only sound he can make,” Hersch said.

They stared at the guard silhouetted against the fog. He glanced in the direction of the sounds, then up at the fireworks he’d been watching. The knocking began again, louder, and the screeching. The guard looked along the shore. When the noise didn’t stop, he climbed down from his platform onto the beach, and walked along the water’s edge, to see what the problem was.

They knew what he would find: Hiram up to his neck in the water, banging with a stick for help, as if he were drowning. Trying to shout.

“Now,” Ephraim urged.

Stooping low, they crept into the water. It was icy on their feet, their shins, shriveled their balls as it clawed at their waists, perhaps not as cold as it would have been were it not for the long hot spell, but cold enough to cut their breath short. They waded to the far side of the second arch, the water burdening their clothes, lapping at their chests. Ephraim reached his hands up to the side of the bridge. Hersch filled his lungs with air and bent beneath him. Ephraim found Hersch’s knees with his feet and climbed. His wet clothing was heavy, was dripping into the water as he twisted to perch on Hersch’s bent back. Holding his breath, he waited till he felt certain the guard was not coming back, then pulled himself onto the bridge. When he looked up, he had to grab onto the arch to keep his balance. The metal pike was directly in front of him. The face of the blacksmith, his dark hair in unruly curls, was staring down. The head seemed to be smiling grimly, the lower lip pulled down, the lower teeth showing, like gargoyles on Gentile buildings he’d seen on the way to the Fair.

Girding himself, Ephraim gripped the pike with both hands and strained to lift it from its iron holder. It came loose in his hands, but with the large head on top that end began to pull down towards the river. He tried to keep it upright but wasn’t strong enough, the head was wrenching the pike from his hands. Beneath the clatter of the fireworks and the rumble of the river he thought he heard the severed head speaking, thought he saw the drooping lips moving.

Shma Yisroel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echud.

Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord Is One.

“It’s falling!” he whispered.

The iron pike clanged against the bridge. Standing below in the water, Hersch caught the loose head in his arms as it plummeted. He hoped a horde of rats wouldn’t come swimming at the smell of blood. He didn’t know if rats could swim.

“Who’s there!” a voice shouted.

Ephraim leaped off the bridge into the water. They were hidden in shadow. Should they stay or run? The guard surely had a musket. But he might miss in the pale moonlight if they fled. If they ran in two directions, one of them, at least, would live.

They didn’t move.

They heard a dull thunk, then footsteps on the stones. A white face appeared at the river’s edge. It emitted a soft croak.

They hauled their heavy legs out of the water, Hersch still clutching the head to his chest. Hiram was there to meet them. Hersch gave the head to the rag dealer, and signaled with his fingers to his brother, “Where’s the guard?” On one of his fingers a piece of cartilage clung like a leech. He shook his hand; it did not fly off, he had to use his other hand to pull it free. He was about to toss it into the river when Ephraim grabbed the sliver and pressed it up into the blacksmith’s neck. “We have little enough of him,” he said.

The guard? Hiram signaled to Hersch. He put his hands together and raised them above his head and made a clouting motion. He had hit the guard with a board.

“We’re kaputt,” Ephraim said. “Let’s hope he isn’t dead.”

“We were kaputt if he caught us.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

They hurried along the beach. Ephraim patted the sand in the dark till his fingers found the dress he had left there. As he lifted it, a rat with shiny wet fur spilled out and scurried away. Carefully he wrapped the head in the dress. He recited the Shma aloud, just as the drooping lips had done.

The fireworks had stopped. He could only hope the Gentiles had left the park without spotting Eva.

Hersch and Hiram took a step away.

“Wait,” Ephraim said. “We have to change the plan. You shouldn’t sleep in the slaughterhouse.”

“Why not?”

“If that guard is dead, they’ll be searching everywhere. You should sleep in your own beds.”

“How can we get through the gate?”

“Change to your dry clothes at the butcher’s. Hide the wet ones. Circle around and make it look like you’re coming back from the Fair. Lean against each other like you’re drunk. Slobber to the guard about how the fireworks were wonderful, too bad he had to work.”

Ephraim set the wrapped head on the ground. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his and Eva’s passes to the Fair. They were wet. He handed them to Hersch. “Wave these at the guard as you go in. He won’t bother to check the names, not when you’re coming back.”

“You think they’ll raid the lane, search every house?”

“Not for the head. Not with the Fair going on, too many foreigners here. But if the guard is dead … ”

“Let’s go,” Hiram signaled to his brother.

They had scurried about ten steps in the dark of different directions when the voice of the guard shot over them from the river’s edge. “Halt, who goes running there?” They bent their heads against musket fire that didn’t come. Ephraim tightened his hold on his bundle and ran up beside the sluice to the ghetto wall, hoping he wasn’t jarring the blacksmith too much; they had to get home before word reached the north gate that the head had been stolen.